Ironic, considering AI is built on piracy
Im somewhat surprised nobody has mentioned how corrosive salt water is. This likely would have to be some platform like an oil rig with power and internet via cables. So why not buy Sealand and build it out? Still lots oft Saltwater in the Wind and offshore but no need to have it floating around in rough waters.
Cheaper to build and maintain probably. You can dock a ship for a while but you need to bring manpower to a platform
Makes sense. Leaves our potable water alone and keeps the fuckers out of sight. They could even put in wind turbines to power the fucking things.
The warming of the water is likely an issue for marine life and ecosystems
Poseidon plz 🥺
Pirates are gonna have an awesome day. I will buy all the stuff they can steal from it.
Is this the sign of the upcoming pirate age?
The real One Piece is the datacenters Samsung made along the way
We’re sorry Mr Robertoe, the pirates, they stole your data. You should change your password right away!
No it’s a sign of delusion by these companies and governments.
I’ve seen pictures of data centers with parking lots full of cars. Are they going to ferry people to and from work each shift?
Probably like an oil rig rotation. You live and work for a contracted period of time on the boat, then you cycle off with someone else every few months or so.
You know what to do, killer orcas
This seems like the sort of idea that on the surface sounds really innovative and “outside the box” but will sink like a stone when put into action
Data centers in space, data centers on ships… it’s likely just an attempt to avoid laws and oversight.
Or just a way for someone that owns a rocket company to get a trillion dollars. Maybe someone making ships can get a cool $100B from
suckersinvestors.In the dot com bubble it was a running joke where someone would take any business idea and and add “on the internet” onto it. “We’ll sell dogfood… on the internet!” Boom! A billion dollars in VC money.
So now it’s take anything and add “using AI” to it. This is even better, it’s not just “using AI” it’s “and put a bunch of AI chips on it.”
“We build ships.” Yawn. “We build ships and put a bunch of AI chips on it” Ok, here’s your $100 Billion!
¿Por qué no los dos? You can excite the fascist libertarians and still get the attention of the people who blow their load the moment someone adds “AI” to a product.
And just like all the libertarian attempts to escape the horrors of being taxed and regulated by taking to the sea this too will fail catastrophically
Bears will eat the data centres, somehow
We’ll get to see REAL digital piracy on the high seas!
Would you kindly stop being so pessimistic?
No, no I don’t think I will
Seems you did not mean to make a BioShock reference. oh well, worth a try =)
Did you just vicariously woosh me via myself?
I… I’m not sure? Now I am confused, ¿?¿
Whatever the case may be, would you kindly have a great day now? ;)
Connection will suck. Imagine this thing and its delicate hardware hit by 10m high waves all the time.
These datacenters will probably be used for AI training, or they will get their own ocean cables.
It’ll have to have a satellite connection and that will go out if there’s a storm.
will sink like a stone
Microsoft already tested underwater data centres ages ago.
That makes a lot more sense to me, keeping something on the bottom of the ocean is much easier that keeping something floating on it
Yes, but I think maintenance is easier on the surface.
We have an opening for a system admin.
Requirements:
- Experience maintaining production servers at scale
- In depth knowledge of security best practices, prevention, mitigation
- SCUBA certification
- Aquatic self-defense skills
Honestly if they are going to build a datacenter anyway, this is my preferred way to go. Plenty of water for cooling, power is harder but not impossible.
Lots of wind on the sea
“Why bring the water to data centers if we can bring the data centers to water?”
– some dumbass exec
What regulatory approval do you need if it’s in international waters
Ships have to be registered in a country and follow the laws of that country when they’re in international water.
If you don’t register your ship you’re effectively a pirate and any navy can just blast your ship out of the water.
Pirates of the Caribbean
Makes infinitely more sense than in space.
Power, maintainence, and cooling all seem easier
Honestly, if it was mandated that data centers are only allowed to use renewable energy, this wouldn’t be too bad.
Would waste heat go into the air or water? What affects could that have?
If the electricity comes from renewable sources, it is no (global) problem. In that case, you’ve just taken the sun’s energy from one place (solar panel, wind turbine, etc.) and moved it elsewhere (the ocean). That’s fine, that energy was going to end up heating the Earth in any case.
This is very different from greenhouse gas emissions, as those increase the total amount of energy the sun delivers to Earth, changing the global balance.
I’d probably be more concerned with them using bunker b or c for power generation.
Came here for this comment. The image is suspiciously free of smokestacks.
It would go into the water, and it would have basically no effect at all.
The amount of heat is many orders of magnitude too low to heat the oceans up.
As long as you don’t park in very shallow waters where it would have a local effect.Isn’t this the attitude that got us climate change in the first place?
True. But the scale is still a bit different:
Climate change added 400 ZJ of heat energy to the oceans so far.
If we piped the heat of all datacenters that currently exist into the oceans, that would add 0.001 ZJ per year.
The major issue (for global warming, not local warming) isn’t waste heat, it’s greenhouse gasses.Heating the oceans globally would require insane and totally unrealistic scale, but the effect on ecosystem on the immediate surroundings is a good question.
A single ship? Ye, no impact.
Thousands? Well, that will be very noticeable.
What if it sinks
Then they certainly won’t overheat
Ocean water is far more abundant than fresh drinking water. If they have to build them and they need water to cool them this seems better. Although definitely potential for issues like hurricanes / storms and environmental impact for starters. They seem desperate to roll out AI as fast as possible, consequences be damned, so they better start thinking outside the box. This technology isn’t more important than freshwater for life to survive.
There is also the added advantage that half of the world’s population lives within 150 miles of the ocean, so finding personnel shouldn’t be a problem.
They’re so desperate they’re putting it in the worst places. I’ve seen it replace the normal search bar on one website, and on another you would just randomly get an AI answer instead of regular search results about half the time.
